This specification relates to suggesting alternative query phrases to users submitting queries to search engines.
Search engines—and, in particular, Internet search engines—aim to identify resources (e.g., web pages, images, text documents, multimedia context) that are relevant to a user's needs and to present information about the resources in a manner that is most useful to the user. Internet search engines return search results in response to a user submitted query. Unfortunately, the terms of a user submitted query may not align well with what the user has in mind, for example, if there is ambiguity in the meaning of the query terms. Even if the search results returned are relevant objectively to the user submitted query, the results may not be relevant to the user's actual subjective needs. If a user is dissatisfied with the search results returned for a query, the user can attempt to refine the query to better match the user's needs.
Some search engines provide to a user suggested alternative queries that the search engine identifies as being related to the user's query. Often, these suggested alternative queries are presented in proximity to the query search results, e.g., at the bottom of a web page of search results. However, due to limited availability of space on search results web pages, the number of suggested alternative queries which can be displayed may be limited. Moreover, the relationship between the query and the suggested alternative queries may not be apparent to a user, which may discourage the user from selecting any of the suggested alternative queries.